


4,263 Miles

by owlinaminor



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Distance, Loneliness, M/M, Misunderstandings, but they find each other eventually it's okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s 4,263 miles from Australia to Japan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	4,263 Miles

**Author's Note:**

> I know that in pretty much every single country besides America, distances are measured in kilometers. But using miles sounded more poetic, and worked with the song lyrics I used, so there you go. A little bit of factual inaccuracy. I don't think it'll kill me. (At least, I hope it won't.)
> 
> Dicaeopolis gets a mention for a.) pushing me into the Free! fandom and b.) reading this after I emailed it to her at one A.M. and telling me that it was cute, but needed more NSFW. (I didn't take her advice on that one. Sorry.)

 

 

> _If I could fall into the sky,_   
>  _Do you think time would pass me by?_   
>  _‘Cause you know I’d **[swim]** a thousand miles,_   
>  _If I could just see you tonight._
> 
> _\--_ A Thousand Miles (Vanessa Carlton)

It’s 4,263 miles from Australia to Japan.

Rin looks it up before he leaves.  He doesn’t write it down anywhere, but he whispers it sitting in front of the computer screen, sings it in the shower with a stupid melody he makes up on the spot, traces it on his arm as the airplane takes off.

He’s going to Australia to pursue his father’s dream.  He’s going to train hard, he’s going to learn from the best, and he’s going to win.  That’s what he tells himself when he remembers that he’ll be 4,263 miles away from home (away from his family, away from his friends, away from Haru.)

Rin tries to be a new version of himself in Australia.  The naïve little kid with the over-enthusiastic smile and the belief in teamwork has to leave, to make way for a hardened, determined athlete, driven to be the best swimmer at the academy.  Rin resolves to focus on swimming, and only swimming.

Of course, he forgets that the most competitive people are the loneliest.

At first, Rin simply doesn’t have time to send emails other than a short couple of lines to his anxious mother.  Then, he can’t figure out how to phrase his thoughts so that his emails don’t sound like cries for help.  Finally, he realizes that his old friends probably don’t want emails from him, anyway.  He just up and left them, and they don’t need him anymore.  (Haru has never needed anyone in the first place – he only needs the water, why would he want an email from Rin?)

And so, drafts of emails pile up in Rin’s head, never to be sent: “ _I don’t have any friends here.  Haru, you’ve always been weird, how do you cope with people not liking you?”  “I beat my hundred-meter butterfly time today by a whole five seconds, but I sort-of miss swimming in relays.”  “We had mackerel for dinner last night.  It didn’t taste as good as yours does, Haru.”  “I miss you.  I miss home.”_

Winter break comes, and it’s a disaster.

If someone asked Rin why he was crying after that race, he wouldn’t be able to explain it.  If someone asked him a week later, he might say that he resented Haru for still being able to beat him after Rin had worked so hard and gone through such extensive training.  If someone asked him a year later, he might say that he didn’t cry, that rumor is clearly false, crying is for the weak and Rin isn’t weak.

(But Rin _is_ weak, all the weaker because he doesn’t know it, and he’s crying because Haru is staring at him blankly, as though he doesn’t care.)

Why should it matter, that Haru doesn’t care?  Rin doesn’t need him.  Rin doesn’t need anyone.

The swimming academy teaches Rin how to think and act like a champion.  His times improve, but he aches with the feeling that something’s wrong, like an ocean without water.

Rin thinks about Haru sometimes, without meaning to; he absentmindedly doodles dark hair above a face smiling on the inside, and wakes up from dreams painted the color of the deep end of the pool on a sunny day.  And the number 4,623 follows him, echoing as he does laps, laughing as he struggles with homework, shouting as he remembers that one perfect relay.

4,623 miles isn’t that far, really.  Rin could swim that.  He would.  He’d swim all the way back to Japan, if only he could figure out exactly what it is he needs to tell Haru.

-~-

It’s 4,263 miles from Australia to Japan.

Haru looks it up a week after Rin leaves, writes it down on a slip of paper and tacks it to the wall of his bedroom, right where he’ll see it first thing when he wakes up in the morning.

Rin’s going to Australia to become the best swimmer in the world, and Haru is still stuck in Japan, where all he can do is hope to keep up.  He joins a middle school swim team and goes to every practice, determined that when Rin comes back, Haru will still be fast enough to be his friend.  For the first time in Haru’s life, the desire to simply swim for the sake of swimming is overruled.

Haru swims in relays, with the new team.  Sometimes his team wins and sometimes they don’t, but he never sees that special sight again.

The worst thing, though, is that Rin never sends him any emails.  Haru’s a little insulted at first, but then he realizes that Rin’s probably far too busy becoming a top-notch competitor to even think about his old friends, and doesn’t even remember Haru anymore.  (Of course, Haru couldn’t be the first one to send something – that would be humiliating.)

Winter break comes, and Haru doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t understand why Rin is crying, because Rin shouldn’t be crying – he should be smiling, or laughing, the way he always used to.  Rin’s smile made Haru want to smile, too, and now, it’s lost forever.  And for what?  Because Haru won one race?

Haru doesn’t want to compete, if his competing is going to make Rin cry.  So he quits the team (and the coaches are thankful, because he never did what they wanted him to in the first place) and resigns himself to oceans, lakes, bathtubs, and fountains – no more pools.

Sometimes, though, the memories return to Haru, and he wonders.  He wonders how much better Rin’s gotten at swimming.  What he looks like, all grown up.  Whether or not he smiles enough.  Whether or not he ever think of Haru.

When cleaning his room one day, Haru finds the little slip of paper with “4,263 miles” hidden behind his bed, crumples it up into the tiniest ball he can manage, and tosses it out the window.

He wants to swim those 4,263 miles.  His parents would try to stop him and Makoto probably _would_ stop him, but he could do it.  He could swim all the way to Rin and tell him never to cry again, ever, because that would make the world a sadder place.

Haru doesn’t do it, because he doesn’t think Rin would appreciate advice from someone he barely even remembers, much less cares for.

-~-

It’s 4,263 miles from Australia to Japan.

Haru spent the years missing Rin, and Rin spent the years missing Haru, but when they finally meet again, the distance between them doesn’t shrink – it grows.

The number 4,263 pounds in Rin’s head, and he wants it out.  He can never compete the way he wants to with that weight on his back, he believes, and the only way to lighten the load is to beat Haru.

Haru is okay.  He thought he’d be angry at Rin, or happy to see him, and maybe he is both of those things, but to such small degrees that the emotions are unrecognizable.  But there’s something beeping at the back of Haru’s mind, trying to remind him of something he forgot.

“I’ll never swim with you again” is the blow that puts a million miles between Rin and Haru.

Haru floats on his back in the Iwatobi pool for hours, asking himself about a smile and a scowl and the kind of words that can hurt.  When he figures it out, he stands up and shakes himself off without a towel – not free, not quite yet, but close.  The distance is back to 4,364.

Rin watches the relay without him in it, and realizes that everything is wrong.  He wants something, something he thinks he almost had before, and he’s no longer sure what it is.

And then, regionals happens, and it’s brilliant.

Rin is both smiling and crying as his arms encircle Haru, and Haru leans into the touch just enough to make it personal.  The distance is shrinking.

-~-

It's 4,263 miles from Australia to Japan.

If you booked a flight on an airplane, it would take you less than eight hours to fly the distance.  If you crossed on a boat, it would take a week or two.  If you shunned the ease of air travel and scoffed at the excitement of the sailor’s life, you would have to swim.  Most people would tell you it was impossible, and you might kill yourself trying, but try you could.

If you swam, it would take you over forty days.

But all journeys come to an end eventually.  All travelers find their way home.

There’s a knock on a door at eleven o’clock one night.  The sound echoes like thunder through the damp summer air, shines like a searchlight through the twilight.

The door opens.  Aquamarine eyes stare unflinchingly, ruby eyes scan frantically for something steady to focus on.  A carefully-planned speech (hours in the making, the perfect balance of powerful and needy) falls apart.  All that remains are the foundations:

“Haru, I … I want … I need … I love …”

“Took you long enough to figure it out.”

And the distance is gone.

 

 

> _And I would **[swim]** five hundred miles,_   
>  _And I would **[swim]** five hundred more,_   
>  _Just to be the man who **[swam]** a thousand miles,_   
>  _To fall down at your door._
> 
> _\--_ Five Hundred Miles (folk song)


End file.
